Tip top

About Tip top

February mornings over Powell's Cove come with a hard, bright cold off the water, and the Whitestone Bridge stands up out of it like a drawing. Tip top starts at the top step and works down: stoop, path, apron, driveway, curb cut, until a house is joined back to the street. Whitestone and College Point tilt toward the East River, so the melt runs and then locks up again, and treatment follows on the stretches the sun never reaches. Plowing handles the volume; the shovel handles everything that matters — the narrow side path, the corner by the mailbox, the last two feet at the sidewalk. It is a short list of tasks, done all the way to the end.